The Sado-Bloggist

What is a blog?

I sit in front of my computer screen lighting up my face in the dark of my room.

I have a blog. It’s called the Toe-Bin. Will I tell you that this is the blog you’re on right now, as if you haven’t noticed, as if you were stupid? Perhaps that’s what readers really want, in the end, in this world of blogging. So I’ll tell you then: You’re actually on my blog. Seriously. Mad, isn’t it? And here I am talking (ahem, typing) about my blog, on my blog. Ohhh. How meta. How third wall defying.

“Tell us more,” they would say (whoever “they” actually are; I have evidence that people visit the blog, though they remain silent, neither following it nor leaving comments; ghosts of the writer, amplified, magnified, made finitely ambiguous in the world of the Blog; will somebody just give me a paycheck for this shit, then everything would be grand), “Tell us more about how you’re sooo smart, about how you’re going to shine the light of postmodern irony onto the Blog and the nature of blogging. Eat us up, chew us some, then spit us out, all battered, bruised and saliva soaked. Umm.” 

Fucking sadomasichists. Or maybe that’s me ...

I stare at the screen, hoping beyond hopes that something will come to me. Will I attempt some philosophical thing about the nature of the modern world, something inherently bleak - ‘cause it makes you seem smart and somewhat infallible; ‘cause it’s another way of saying I work with limits like anyone, but I want you to think of me as some omnipotent deity.

From which all things come forth; to which all things meet their final end; I am your Writer! Bow before me!

Or, in this case, I am your Blogger.

“Your” blogger. Hmm, how to build an audience. How to do that on this shiny screen. I click onto statistics on my blog’s homepage (isn’t this so exciting, I’m giving you a peek behind the curtain, so you can see where the magic happens!), and I click into page views. Here I can know how many people have viewed my page on a number of timescales, ranging from a day, to a week, to a month, right up till the entire lifetime of your blog. None today. Some yesterday. Which article? Ah yes, that one I wrote ages ago about Mad Men, the Godfather and the American Dream.

Where were they from? Hard to tell. Could have been people from America (about a third of my entire audience), from here in Ireland (the rest of my audience bar ...)  or from Spain ( ... the dregs, the rest of the entire world lumped into the category of “dreg” because they don’t visit an Irish blogger’s page enough). Did they read the article, or just click on the site? And who are these people? Would they be able to give me some money?

An imaginary tumbleweed floats on by.

What am I missing here? Am I wrong to treat my blog as my personal sick-bucket, diarrhea of the typed variety, a bin for severed toes? That’s the whole idea of it. See my name is Conor Tobin, second name Tobin, and when you separate out the two syllables within the word you get “Toe” and “Bin”, which sounds sort of like a bin for severed toes. And imagine if I had a load of severed toes lying around ...

Fucking sadist.

No, no, no, I assure you dear reader/internet junky, they are my own imaginary severed toes. “Ah, he’s just a sadomasichist, like us. That, we can tolerate ...”

Whew. Right. So there’s all these toes lying in a bin, supposed to symbolise ... well, supposed to symbolise the freedom of this blog to go in whichever direction I wish it to go in. An open vista, a sea of possibility on the ocean of the world wide web, a virtual alternate reality filled with trolls, memes, porn and dancing guys from South Korea. It’s all so free.

It’d be nice, though, if someone would pay me, take an interest, offer me a job, leave strongly worded comments of adulation of condemnation. Please! Something, anything! I’ll dance like a monkey, I’ll eat excrement, I’ll piss in a flower pot. I’ll post up pictures of cats doing funny things! ‘Cause blogs are so cool, so in right now!

I fucking hate blogging, but I do it anyway, like the good sadomasichist that I am ...